


The Consequences

by Path



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures, Wakfu
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-19
Updated: 2011-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-21 13:17:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Path/pseuds/Path
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave and Aradia watch, from outside time, as Yugo and Adamaï fight Nox, and try to get up the will to switch the Xelor with Bec Noir to save their session.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Consequences

**Author's Note:**

> Crossover fic is weird. For ArtisticSnob on the Kink Meme, despite the lack of kink.

They watch the child- the children, she amends, having seen the little dragon's other form- and pity.

"This sucks," Dave says in the moments between time.

"We should help," Aradia says, "we should do something."

They've already watched it too many times. Both of them know there's nothing they can do. It happens again.

"Nobody turns their back on me," says the tall man in the mask and wrappings, "without facing the consequences." His hands twitch and fix to a new position, clock hands spontaneously resetting, a motion intimate and familiar to the two of them. They thrust into position, a tense three inches from the boy's head, and sap something from him, not something the two can see.

He is about their age, and his body wires itself, then drops like a stone, his eyes rolling up in his head. Aradia steps forward, and Dave puts a hand on her shoulder, pulling her back. "Y'know I can't let you do that, 'Dia," he says, voice thick and low, the better to conceal emotion. It's not like the two of them are running short on it. Gotta work on muting that down constantly. Emotions are just plain high.

Then the world begins rewinding, and they watch from their sanctum and wait to do the same thing.

"What's his name?" she asks.

"Don't name the cow you're gonna eat," Dave says. "You're just gonna cry later."

"I'm crying now," she says, and he doesn't check to make sure it's true. He just gets ready and waits for her to do the same.

Rewind.

Rewinding as Nox rewinds, undoing what he undoes, is more than surreal, but actually nauseating. Again, like every time, they both get the unnerving feeling that, as the fabric of time unravels, Nox is aware of it.

"Okay," says Dave when they can speak again, "now we're just watching for the hell of it. We got the weak point. Now we just gotta pull it off."

"I don't like it," Aradia says. "I don't know if we should-"

"-if we should save our session?" Dave asks. "Come on, trollgirl, we've only got so many options, and right now it's this or dying like fish in buckets, or is that way gross for you?"

She waves her hand dismissively. "I'm getting used to it from you. But I just don't think switching who's dying like cuttlefish in aquatic containment vessels is going to solve anything."

"Solves us being the ones dying," he says.

She sets her lips and says nothing.

"This time, we'll do it," Dave tells her. "We'll port Noir in and Nox out. The timey-wimey bullshit around him'll have a sympathetic source like all of Lalonde's crappy Wiccan books say we need, it'll be instantaneous. We can deal with that asshole. Non-omniscient teleportation, whatever. Piece of cake."

Aradia doesn't say anything. The boy's hair is blonde like Dave's again, and his hands aren't scarred yet.

"You ready?" asks Dave. "We'll do it. We'll get a boss we can beat."

"And what about him?" she asks, pointing. The boy and the dragon-child stand back to back, and Nox changes place with a flicker.

"He could teleport out," says Dave, and his voice is lower and thicker than usual. "He could take his dragon bro and vanish."

"But Bec Noir would find him," she says, though she doesn't have to. "And everything in between."

"Fuck," says Dave evenly. "What are we supposed to do? He's cheating. We gotta cheat too."

"But not like this," she says, and yes, he realizes, actually looking at her face, she does have tears running down it.

"What other choice we got?" asks Dave.

They watch together, ready. Noir is kept, stunned in a red cage of time, waiting. The second they move, the second they move it, everything will happen.

Play.

The world lurches, and rights as if it has no idea it was just whirling around like a top. Nox hovers. The boy leaps for him.

Dave looks at her. "You ready?" he asks, and he can tell she's watching the kid, thinking "What if that was me?" or probably "What if he was my friend?" or something equally and world-spanningly compassionate. He doesn't have that in him. Or maybe he does, but his friends just have to come first. Or maybe he feels it too. It's hard to tell, behind those shades. He wonders why Nox wears the mask.

"No," she whispers, and they watch it again.

They miss their chance, and do not rewind to catch it, do not pause when Nox reaches the glowing cube and makes it break the world open, open enough to span a universe and allow the passage of a villain they can't control, for just that split-second.

"Good luck," she whispers unheard to the boy, protected by their shroud outside of time.

"Save some for us," mutters Dave. "We're gonna need it more."

The next time Nox flickers and vanishes, so do the two unseen watchers, and they do not return to watch again.


End file.
